Ours may be one of the smallest, at 130m2 on an 85m2 external footprint. The development of four (I think it was four) housing association houses we looked at in Devon were smaller, but it was a terrace of houses on a sloping plot, rather than detached.

Ours may be one of the smallest, at 130m2 on an 85m2 external footprint. The development of four (I think it was four) housing association houses we looked at in Devon were smaller, but it was a terrace of houses on a sloping plot, rather than detached.

The reason I am asking is that I may have a plot for a potential studio bungalow in my sights; I've mentioned this before in a blog:

I've been itching to see how inexpensively, and on how tight a plot, I can build an attractive and comfortable 2-bed passive bungalow on roughly that pattern at about 70-80 sqm, if necessary tailoring the form to be efficient but attractive and liveable, as a test of a rental newbuild targetted at retired couples or dinkies who like to travel, or possibly young couples.

In my area the finished value will not be much above 140-150k unless I go for an expensive patch, and the monthly rental will not be over £600-700 a month if that, so it has to be cost-effective.

The house I have asked qs about this morning has an approx 175sqm plot on the side, which *might* reach the local policy standards unequivocally if carefully designed.

The main reason we choose MBC was they do the slab and the frame. Having seen one of their competitors build with the slab laid by a builder which was a total mess it seemed sensible to us that they take responsibility for the whole build. Also their stage payments were really reasonable. Many companies require a large percentage of the cost up front. Also the recommendations on this forum helped. Cannot fault their dedication and hard work. We are really pleased with our house.

Just placed 10% deposit with MBC today!
I too visited Jeremy (very similar size sqm)...had a good look round, asked lots of questions, asked and watched many things on this website (valued source of information).

on the whole this website helped me decide the best course and choice of build, the pro's and con's of different materials and renewables and a balanced view on building for the first time!....it can get scary:)

They are building mine at present, roof battening should be finished today. They should host a map on their Website showing where they have built houses, the same as Ecohaus do with their window intsallations.

This is all very reassuring to read, we haven't submitted our plans for a quote yet but MBC are one of our top choices. We spoke with them at the show yesterday and they seemed nice and down to earth, they also told me thy are a member on here so they read everything we are saying - they haven't given away their user name by commenting yet though!

Anyone can read the forum, without needing to join, and at least a couple of people at MBC (and a few other build companies, too) read this place. Few post, because to do so would mean them spending a lot of time answering questions here, when they'd rather be building houses. I know who two of the people that read this forum are, and know one who has probably joined but not posted, as I occasionally get a call about something here if it's not accurate!

As you've gathered from reading here they are generally held in pretty high regard by those here who have used them, and at a guess I'd say there much be getting on towards a dozen members here that have had houses built by them, so far none with any major issues. The main advantage in what they offer, to self-builders, is that they provide a neat package, with the insulated foundations, sealed and weathertight insulated frame and roof, something very few other companies do. We felt that having the same company contractually responsible for the foundation system and the house removed a lot of risk and also reduced a lot of partially hidden cost from other quotes.

I drew up a spreadsheet to try and compare quotes in the end, because it was very hard to compare something like the near-all inclusive MBC quote with several other quotes that were only for the frame, or only for the foundation system, or which didn't include the cost of crane or lifting gear hire, or many other things. All told, we found that comparing quotes from different companies was extremely hard, and more than a little stressful. We settled on MBC really because we (well, me, really) didn't want to take the risk of the foundation system not matching the frame. There's not a lot of tolerance in a well-built timber frame, especially one built off-site to a high degree of accuracy*** and had we used one company for the foundation system and another for the frame I could foresee there being a lot of stress in trying to both fix the problem and establish who was at fault.

*** The high accuracy of a factory built frame given significant, and unforeseen by me, cost savings during second fix. We found we used around 10% less plasterboard and floor coverings than estimated, because the house is dead square and there are lower cutting losses. Because the frame is built with all the timbers on exactly 400mm centres it also speeds up the fixing of plasterboard, as 2400 x 1200 sheets always have joints on stub centres. Our guys reckon that that saved 1/2 day of labour, for two people. We also saved a bit of first fix (although not as much, as I did most of it) because their open Posijoist and 45mm service void system made it very quick and easy to fit the pipework, ducting and electrical cables.